‘Ice-cream so good’: The women making thousands online by acting like robots.

As we stand on the precipice of an A.I revolution, everything that is fake seems real and everything that is real is trying to be fake. Makes sense?

The latest trend to go viral on TikTok hits the intersection between reality and simulation, where people make thousands of dollars going live pretending to be an NPC. For those needing a brush up on their digi-lingo, NPC stands for ‘non-character player’ and has become popular thanks to video games like Grand Theft Auto. They’re the characters you select when playing these games and they have particular robot-like mannerisms. All over TikTok you’ll see users mimicking the trademark physicality of an NPC, garnering them millions of views.

Just over a year ago content creator Nicki i Loczek went viral with her video depicting an NPC in the wild. Twelve months later she has 2.9 million followers and has made a lucrative career out of, well, pretending to be fake.

@loczniki

It’s been a year since our 1st NPC date 🥹

♬ original sound - Nicki i Loczek

Now the trend is infiltrating the livestream space and there are a few top creators who are making bank. A woman who goes by the name PinkyDoll has blown up in this space by simply mimicking an NPC while going live from her TikTok account. By now you would’ve seen her image splashed across the Internet and heard her catch phrase a million times over.

“Mmm ice-cream so good.” At this point it has been imprinted on my brain and I can’t stop repeating it over and over again.

Two weeks ago, if you’d uttered the words “ice-cream so good” to me I would have looked at you strangely before conceding that ice-cream is indeed delicious, all while completely missing the context of the world's newest catch phrase that has been meme’d into oblivion.

So how are creators like PinkyDoll making so much money? On TikTok users can gift creators with tokens which in turn materialises into cold, hard cash. If you’ve tuned into one of PinkyDoll’s livestreams you would see a number of icons popping up, marking another cash donation from a fan. But surely a few token gifts on TikTok can earn you a crust. Well, think again.

In an interview with The New York Times, PinkyDoll - real name Fedha Sinon - says she’s clearing upwards of US$2,000 per stream. The 27-year-old Canadian native adds that between her social media accounts which include TikTok, Instagram and OnlyFans, she’s making around US$7,000 per day, thanks to her talent for effectively cosplaying as a robot.

There are others jumping on this cash grab too, with creators like Cherry Crush and Satoyu727 bringing in millions of followers, and in turn, a hefty paycheck for pretending to be an NPC. It’s big money, and for a lot of people they’re wondering how something so simple can result in such a tidy sum.

“I don’t really care what people say about me,” said PinkyDoll in her interview with The New York Times. “If they want to think I am this or that, it’s fine with me. At the end of the day, I’m winning.”

Like so many trending sensations online, it’s about being in the right place at the right time teetering on the edge of a trend before it tips over into the stratosphere of virality. For creators like Pinkydoll their success in the NPC livestream space could be directly linked to the current state of play in the world. Between the cost of living crisis, housing affordability and the loom of climate change, there’s a lot of worry taking up space in our heads. But for a moment in our day we can log on to TikTok, join a livestream and watch a human pretend to lick an ice-cream like a robot. It’s weird, it’s a little perverse and it’s the kind of mind numbing content we need to massage our weary noggins.

It might not make a whole lot of sense how or why NPC content is going boom right now but maybe we don’t need to figure it out. Switch off and let the bizarre melt your mind for a moment.

Feature Image: TikTok.